"My impression of Kossuth's _phrenology_ was that there was not power or animal energy sufficient to account for the ascendancy he acquired over a turbulent aristocracy and a rude uncivilized democracy. The secret lies evidently in his eloquence, in which he certainly surpasses any modern orator; and, taking all things into account, he is in that respect probably a phenomenon without equal in past or present times. I fear when the French news reaches America, it will damp the ardour of his friends there, and make them more than ever resolved to 'stand upon their own ground' rather than venture into the quagmire of European politics. It has confirmed me in my non-intervention policy. It is evident that we know nothing about the political state of even our next neighbours, and how are we likely to be better informed about Germany or Italy? _Their ways are not our ways._ Let us not attempt to judge them by our standard. Let us endeavour to set them a good example. If 36 millions of Frenchmen, or 46 millions of Germans, submit to a despotic Government, it is because they do not really desire anything better. "If they wished for a different form of Government they could have it. What presumption in _us_ to think that our interference in the matter can be necessary! "Believe me, faithfully yours, "RICHARD COBDEN. "EDWD. WATKIN, Esq." I venture here a few extracts from my little book of 1851, as detailing my views, new and fresh as they were, on American questions. * * * * * "I have presumed to think that these hasty Letters, destitute as they are of all literary merit, written during a visit to the 'New World,' may be, just now, worth presenting to 'every-day sort of people,' like myself, who have little time to travel; and, unable to do both, would rather watch the free growth of a new country, than observe the decadence and decrepitude of old ones. For just now, when a large part of our labouring population is strangely awakening to the impression, that a dollar a-day and a vote at elections in the United States are better than eightpence a-day in Ireland; the New Home to which our fellow-countrymen are thus flocking--and in which, somehow or other, they prosper and are independent--is especially interesting. "Steam navigation and railways have so far reduced the difficulties and uncertainties of Western travel, that it is now as easy and as cheap to spend one's autumn holidays, as I have done, in a trip to America of some eleven thousand miles out-and-home, as fifteen years ago it was to get to John o' Groats and back by land conveyance, or to go a-shooting in Sutherlandshire--which, by-the-bye, is an out of the way and dismal sort of county even yet.